Traditionally, a couscous pan essentially includes two parts, one part consisting of a pan and an upper part that can be encased on said lower part and consisting of a receptacle with a bottom with openings. The lower part is for cooking the vegetables and the meat entering into the composition of the couscous, while the upper part is for cooking the semolina by means of the vapor proceeding from the lower part.
There are essentially two types of couscous pans, which differ from each other as regards their shape, namely the first one, the traditional one, which includes two parts, an upper one and a lower one, having a curved shape, the cross-section of the upper encasing part having a profile with an S-shaped cross-section, while the second one has a globally cylindrical shape, the lower and upper parts having the same diameter. On the other hand, there exist couscous pans of various capacities and thus of various diameters.
The presently used couscous pans have the drawback of an imperfect tightness between the upper and lower parts, so that a quantity of vapor escapes to the outside and does not pass through the semolina, which then requires a longer cooking time, which can furthermore be prejudicial to the cooking of the vegetables and the meat.
In order to cope with this drawback, the cook generally wraps the upper part of the couscous pan in a piece of preferably wet linen, such as a kitchen towel, which is intercalated between said upper part and the lower part, in order to bring about the tightness. The tightness brought about is however not perfect, namely because it is not easy to perfectly match the outer contour of the cross-section that can be encased of the upper part and the inner contour of the opening of the lower part. In addition, this way of acting can lead to an inflammation of the piece of linen.